Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Early Artist Impression of MCA) Indian Air Force has issued Air Staff Requirements for the Countries Next Generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) which will be designed and build in India .
Requirements laid down by Air force is
1 ) AMCA will not exceed 25 tons weight .
2 ) Twin engine powered aircraft with higher thrust.
3) AESA Radar
4) Semi – Stealth is not an option , IAF wants it to be fully Stealthy aircraft with low RCS .
5 ) Redesign in its currently proposed air frame design to make it more stealthier
6 ) More of Locally developed technology and less imported technology (Radars,Engines,Avionics)
Aircraft will be completely different then what earlier DRDO and ADE had put forward which was earlier known as Medium combat aircraft (MCA ) with Semi-stealth features , Government of India has not officially sanctioned the project but the ASR issued to DRDO will be studied and then government will be approached for the funding .
DRDO will approach government in next six to seven months and by 2011 project funding will start with its first flight to be made by 2016-17 period and induction into air force by 2025 . DRDO is confident in developing most of the avionics for the AMCA in house ,while the Engine most probably will be Kaveri-2 which will be a joint venture between India and France , Sources close to idrw.org had indicated that contracts between India and France on development of Kaveri-2 was not signed due to requirements of the engine was not put forward by the air force .
Engine requirements should be 90kn in thrust ,Its almost sure that the first aircraft will not be powered by the Kaveri-2 since it will take more then 5 years to develop this engine for the aircraft and will only power the later developed prototype , mostly likely new engine which will power Tejas MK-2 either Ej-200 or Ge’s F414 will power initial aircraft . DRDO is currently planning three Prototypes of AMCA which will carry out initial test flights .